Aperture
by withered
Summary: The anatomy of a confession


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Aperture

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The shot is beautiful. Goes without saying. Ichigo's always had an eye for beautiful things, and as a photographer, it's practically a requirement of the job.

But his latest Instagram post has the industry abuzz for reasons that have as much to do with his year-long hiatus as it does the subject of the image itself.

It's a pair of legs; one crossed over the other, set in a slant of lazy nonchalance; toes pointed as if the model were mid-stretch. There's a slash of pale skin, raised higher in the frame implying movement of the upper body, the hint of a chin catching in the shadow as if tilted in challenge, or offering.

It's the absence of, that attracts attention.

There's no face to attach the model to, shrouded as she is in darkness, but it's provocative nonetheless; ripe with secrecy and innuendo, captured in perfect contrast of shadow and light.

The consensus is her beauty, her mystery, the untouchable allure of her.

There's no looking away. Ichigo agrees.

More pictures are posted, bit by bit. And the quality and stylistic choice of the images are the same.

Like breadcrumbs, Ichigo unveils who they agree must be his muse, in snapshots of similar, potent and frustratingly teasing photos.

Whoever she is, there's something otherworldly about her.

There are delicate pale hands clutching flannel sheets under the watercolor softness of the dawn, the retreating night hiding the softness of her forearms before tendrils of dark hair and a pale forehead graze the bottom of the frame like the trailing fingers of a caress.

In another, there's that same spill of dark hair, a pale temple from that same forehead, a sharp, cleverly arched brow with wrinkles at an eye they haven't been graced to meet yet; against an overexposed wall. The sun, like a spotlight, is merciless and harsh, but the dimple at her cheek is more amused rather than afraid.

They start to think that if Ichigo doesn't love her yet, he will.

Washed out in honeyed yellow light is her legs once more. One of them is hooked over the arm of a chair, a black pump dangling from the toes while the other foot is propped up, shoeless, against it. Her knee just kissing at her chest before it's interrupted by another strategic glare of darkness. It's the same casual sort of stretch; automatic, unthinking, intimate.

There's a suspicion that the shots have been made to look that way, that the intention had been to convey snatches of a romance, dreamlike and fleeting; that Ichigo's model is just a foil for a muse in a metaphor of voyeuristic suggestion.

But he's made use of the dark to so carefully shelter her from his gaze even as the little she bares tantalizes him for moremoremore that they second guess it all together.

Perhaps that's why he's holding back. Ichigo's letting them see what he sees begrudgingly, an idea made more clear at the announcement of his next photo gallery.

He hasn't replied to any of the comments that have bombarded each post with questions in the three months since it all began which isn't surprising given that every image thus far had been devoid of captions, explanatory or otherwise.

A management made post changes that to announce that Ichigo's next photo gallery show is called Lover, and the accompanying picture is taken overhead of a table, coffee rings, and chips in the wood with a professional camera and a host of unidentifiable reels of negatives. It's suitably impersonal and meaningless, but it's so out of character that people take notice immediately.

The floor chosen for Lover, unsurprisingly, is packed to the rafters, and while the announcement photo was bland, the host of posts Ichigo actually did make previously to it is more than enough of a draw.

Each canvas lovingly renders his mysterious muse, bathing her in light whilst cradling her desperately, jealously in the dark. She appears to the audience in parts and pieces as she has on Ichigo's Instagram page like she's beckoning them to puzzle her out as Ichigo has.

And they think they do as they catch glimpses of the defiant lift of her chin, the tease of her grin and the flirtatious wink of her eye.

There are glimpses of her life in the lightning strikes across her skin, the damaged elastic of her body around her thighs, her stomach. There are other scars that litter her, less obvious in origin, that have healed in different shades of pink and white and brown.

She has freckles; flecks of starbursts in snow on the outside of her shoulders, the nape of her neck, the tip of her nose.

She squints a lot, the lines around her eyes aren't just for the quickness of her smile, though that's obvious too.

Her lips are full, but chapped. She bites at them, an oral fixation which more than one photograph attests to; teases her for, with every exposure of her teeth mid twirl of a straw, spoon stretching her mouth and lollipop bobbing from rosebud lips.

And while there's a rigidity to her posture when she knows she's the subject, there's also a fluidity in the splay of her arms, the relieved arch of her neck, the slump of her shoulders.

She's not used to being the center of attention, but according to Ichigo, she deserves to be. And in his eyes, she is all he would want to pay attention to at all.

For all that this is his show, Ichigo is nowhere to be found, and his muse is not amongst them either; ethereal creature that she is, they're convinced they'd know it was her by her sheer presence alone.

The opening night of the gallery ends without either of them making an appearance.

The following morning, an Instagram post is uploaded, and most would think it's a simple thank-you from Ichigo's management for everyone's support of the event. Instead, what it actually is, is a video:

It's from the evening before. Most of the overhead lights have been switched off though, except for one, and the gallery is empty save for one woman, and one man. Ichigo.

Their backs are to the camera, but his bright hair is an easy enough identifier.

But for all that she's standing there before their eyes, his muse; she's hidden from them still with the comforting bulk of Ichigo's shadow to guard her. Still protecting her, still hoarding her for himself.

As she stares at the photograph illuminated by the only light in the gallery, she murmurs, soft and brittle and hopeful, "Do you mean it?"

"Rukia." It's an incantation, a plea. The single word trembles in the whisper it's encased in.

Her inhale is shaky, "Do you mean it, the way you see me?"

And they all hear the undercurrent of her question: like I'm precious, like I'm lovely, like I'm fragile, like I'm perfect, like I'm not; like I'm yours?

His reply is a ragged exhale.

The video stops.

The caption reads: I wouldn't look anywhere else if you let me.

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**A/n: **As always, find me on tumblr at everything-withered, and by the same pen-name on ao3; I'll be starting a new project in December/January that'll be exclusive to ao3 due to sexual content.


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